PsiQuantum, the US startup with Australian cofounders, has raised a gobsmacking US$1 billion (A$1.5bn) in a round that’s more than doubled its valuation in four years to US$7bn (A$10.5bn).
The California startup, founded in Palo Alto in 2015 by expat Australian professors Jeremy O’Brien, Terry Rudolph, Mark Thompson and Dr Pete Shadbolt, hopes to build the “world’s first useful quantum computer”. Its technology uses photons as a representation of qubits instead of electrons.
PsiQuantum controversially landed $940 million (US$620m) in loans and equity from the federal and Queensland governments in April 2024 to build its first quantum computer in Brisbane, adjacent to the capital’s airport, by 2027.
A few months later it did a similar deal in Chicago, scoring US$500m (A$760m) over 30 years, from various local authorities to build a quantum computer there by 2028.
An artist’s impression of PsiQuantum’s Brisbane airport complex
Australian VC Blackbird, which first invested before the influx of government cash during 2021’s US$450 million Series D, which valued the business at US$3.15bn (A$4.25 bn). Blackbird chipped into the Series E, which was led by existing backers BlackRock, Baillie Gifford and Singapore sovereign fund Temasek, supported by several new investors including Macquarie Capital, Nvidia’s NVentures, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global.
The raise is $300 million more than initial reports of the computer manufacturer seeking $1.2 billion in March this year.
PsiQuantum’s founding team performed the world’s first lab demonstration of a two-qubit logic gate using single photons in Brisbane over 20 years ago, invented integrated quantum photonics and ‘fusion-based’ quantum computing, and made a prototype quantum processor available via the cloud in 2013.
The Series E cash is going towards breaking ground on the quantum computing sites in Brisbane and Chicago, to deploy large-scale prototype systems to validate systems architecture and integration, and improving the performance of its quantum photonic chips and fault-tolerant architecture.
PsiQuantum has integrated what it calls “the missing component for scaling optical quantum computing”, Barium Titanate (BTO), a high-performing electro-optic material, into its manufacturing flow for ultra-high-performance optical switches. The new funding will help them scale up BTO production. A BTO-enabled optical switch also has potential in next-generation AI supercomputers.
The company now has a global team of more than 500 people and recently began moving its Bay Area teams into a new 12,000 square-metre Test & Assembly facility in California. This facility gives the PsiQuantum team the space, power, and controlled environment to enable mass production of sub-assemblies and raw materials, including 300mm BTO wafers. PsiQuantum will build its largest intermediate test systems at this new facility in California and at the company’s future site at the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park (IQMP) in Chicago, where the company will break ground later this year.
‘The real thing’
PsiQuantum cofounder and CEO Jeremy O’Brien
Prof. Jeremy O’Brien, the CEO, said that “only building the real thing—million-qubit-scale, fault-tolerant machines—will unlock the promise of quantum computing,” adding that the project is a grand engineering challenge, not a science experiment.
“We tackled the hardest problems first—at the architectural and chip level—and are now mass-manufacturing best-in-class quantum photonic chips at a leading US semiconductor fab,” he said.
“With this funding, we’re ready to take the next decisive steps to deliver the full potential of quantum computing.”
His cofounder and chief scientific officer, Dr Pete Shadbolt, said they’d pushed the technology to an unprecedented level of maturity and performance over the last nine years since they started.
“We have the chips, we have the switches, we have a scalable cooling technology, we can do networking, we have found the sites, we have the commercial motive and the government support – we’re ready to get on and build utility-scale systems.”
As well as the investment from NVIDIA, PsiQuantum is also collaborating with the chip maker on several fronts including quantum algorithms and software, GPU-QPU integration and PsiQuantum’s silicon photonics platform.
Blackbird partner Michael Tolo said the Series E “cements” the company’s path to deliver the world’s first useful quantum computer.
For Australia, this milestone is recognition of the progress and consistency PsiQuantum has made over the past 18 months, and demonstrates Australia’s opportunity to become a global leader in quantum computing. We love the PsiQuantum team’s courage to take the path less travelled,” he said.
